Facebook Says It 'Limit' the Reach of Groups that Break Rules

Facebook announced this week that it is changing the way it recommends groups and will limit the reach of those that break its rules.

NBC News reports that Facebook announced on Wednesday that it will be changing the way it recommends groups and will limit those that break its rules as the platform attempts to crack down on what it considers extremism and misinformation.

Tom Alison, Facebook’s vice president of engineering, said in a blog post: “We know we have a greater responsibility when we are amplifying or recommending content. As behaviors evolve on our platform, though, we recognize we need to do more.”

Under Facebook’s new rules, the site will show rule-breaking groups lower in the recommendations bar which will make them less discoverable to other users. The more rules a group breaks, the more it will increase restrictions on the group eventually resulting in the group being removed entirely.

Facebook also plans to inform possible new members of rule-violating groups that the group has “allowed posts that violate our Community Standards,” when they attempt to join the group. For existing group members, Facebook will reduce the reach of rule-breaking groups by giving it lower priority in a user’s news feed.

Facebook will also require users in charge of rule-breaking groups to more strictly police their communities, approving all posts before publishing when members continue to violate policies. If an admin or moderator repeatedly approves content that violates Facebooks rules, the entire group could be removed.

“We don’t believe in taking an all-or-nothing approach to reduce bad behavior on our platform,” Alison said in the statement. “Instead, we believe that groups and members that break our rules should have their privileges and reach reduced, and we make these consequences more severe if their behavior continues – until we remove them completely. We also remove groups and people without these steps in between when necessary in cases of severe harm.”